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Date:

March 14, 1818

Extent:

3p

Summary:

This document is a public address dated March 14, 1818 from the governor of Tennessee, Joseph McMinn. The subject of the address is a treaty with the Cherokee Indians regarding boundary lines within the state.

By a Law of the last session of the Legislature of this state, making provision for entering the Land Lying within the limits of this State acquired from the cherokees by a late treaty between that nation and the United States it is made the duty of the Executive of the State of Tennessee on being notified of the ratification of the treaty, to give three months previous notice by proclamation to be published in the Knoxville & Nashville newspapers of the time when the respective surveyor generals office will be opened for the receiving of Entries & and as these appear to be some interest felt by many relative to the time of issuing the proclamation, I deem it proper to inform all concerned, that by the provisions of the Eleventh article of the treaty, the President of the United States is to appoint a commissioner or Commissioners, who shall in conjunction with such persons as the cherokees may appoint for that purpose, proceed to run a boundary line, laying off the tract of Country & did agreeably to the provisions of the first and second articles of the Treaty, whereby the limits within which the warrants are to be located will be defined and every person interested will then know, the precise bounds liable to the satisfaction of Warrants; likewise many evils and difficulties

will be avoided that would result from making entries in an unlimited and undefined tract of country

Under these circumstances, upon mature consideration I feel constrained by a regard to the interest of my fellow citizens to suspend the issuance of the proclamation and decline acting under the authoirty [authority] of the Law above referred to until the lines described by the Treaty shall have been duly run as stipulated; after which event the public are assured, no time will be lost in complying on my part with the requisitions of the said act of Assembly.__